


Forestry

by AconitumNapellus



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Germany, M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 19:44:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21214046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AconitumNapellus/pseuds/AconitumNapellus
Summary: Illya has been tied to a tree all night, and Napoleon is a long way away.Written to a prompt by bonniejean1953 for the Hallowe'en Challenge on LiveJournal.





	Forestry

It’s hard to believe a forest can be so quiet. There should be animal noises. Wind. A stream trickling over water smoothed rocks. It’s dark, but nocturnal animals are everywhere, aren’t they? Shouldn’t there be a badger? A fox? There isn’t even an owl.

The silence makes the flesh creep between his shoulder blades. Why is it so quiet? Maybe it’s something Thrush has done. Maybe it’s something to do with the facility they were investigating. What would kill off all animal life in the area?

It’s all immaterial now. All that matters right now is the feeling of the bark against his naked chest, pressing into the flesh of his arms. Those uncomfortable bits that dig in like dull blades, that had seemed inconvenient at first, but now are an agony. 

He is so tired. He is so, so tired. He leans his forehead against the bark and closes his eyes.

His knees weaken, and he sags. He needs to be able to sink down, but he can’t. For a little while he hangs against the ropes and the tree. His hands have been held up for so long that they’re numb. He can’t see them, pulled around the tree trunk and lashed together on the other side. He can’t feel them any more, not cold, or pain, or anything. They might as well not be there.

He tries to flex his fingers, and doesn’t even know if they’re moving. Maybe they are. Maybe they’re not.

‘Napoleon?’ he murmurs.

His voice sounds so quiet in the quiet of the woods. Of course there isn’t an answer. He saw Napoleon being dragged away. He knows there isn’t any hope.

_ The slamming of fists into his side. The slamming him against the tree. They tore off his shirt and tie and threw them away. They bound him with the ropes and then they punched him, and punched him again, hit him with cudgels until he retched against the bark. His face and chest pressed against sick, the smell rose up around him. They punched him again. _

He blinks his eyes open again, and tries to move his head. Cramp clutches at a tendon in his neck, and he half-whimpers in pain. He can’t move a hand to rub the pain away. He sets his teeth together and waits, and gradually it subsides.

_ Napoleon _ , he thinks.

He doesn’t know where they took him. Just that they took him away.

God, how he wants to sit down, lie down, anything. Anything but be held upright against this tree. There’s a broken branch pressing into his chest, between his ribs, and the pain of it has transcended itself, become its own thing. It’s like a little entity, like something living there in his chest, singing in a single note about its own pain. He’s so tired his brain feels as though it’s spinning in his skull. All his cells seem to be vibrating like a tuning fork, a continuous hum of exhaustion.

_ Napoleon _ , he thinks.

Where did they take him? Why did they take Napoleon and leave Illya here? Did they think Napoleon was more likely to give them answers? Did they think they could break him?

He’s so far from civilisation that he will probably die here, tied to this tree. No one will come. They’d walked two miles into the forest before the men caught up with them, and the men marched them deeper still. He can’t hear cars. He hasn’t even heard a plane overhead. Nothing. It’s as if he and the tree are the only things in the world.

He tries to flex his fingers again. For a moment a fear shivers through him. His hands being held up for so long that the blood can no longer enter them. His fingers growing wizened, black. His hands shrivelling into mummy’s claws.

He feels sick. The sick smell all around him makes it worse. It makes his stomach heave a little. But it’s stupid. His hands aren’t going to wizen into mummy’s claws. He’ll be dead long before that happens.

He can barely see the other trees. It’s so dark in this forest. If he tries to turn his head upwards he can see the branches above his head, but the leaf canopy makes everything dark. It’s cold. The year is just turning. The leaves aren’t ready to fall, but it’s night, and it’s cold, and shivering doesn’t make him any warmer.

He leans his head on the tree again. He lets the bark press against his forehead. His eyes drift closed, open, closed…

The pain makes him gasp. He’s slumped, only the ropes holding him up. That broken branch in his ribs is searing. His ribs sear every time he breathes, because something must have been broken when they beat him. He stumbles, moves his feet, gets himself stable again. He’d fallen asleep against the trunk of the tree, fallen into the ropes’ embrace. He shifts his feet again, widening his stance. His bladder is so full that it hurts.

Somewhere, far away, he hears a dog howl. The shivers run through him again. Of all the life he wants to hear, dogs are his worst nightmare. He’s bleeding and defenceless, and he knows what hungry dogs can do to defenceless people.

Maybe where there are dogs, there are people. Maybe there’s hope.

He breathes in and out, in and out again. He steadies himself, breathes, then musters his strength and calls out, ‘ _ Hilfe! Hilfe! _ ’

His voice echoes through the trees. He can hear that the trees are there in the way that his call is echoed, sucked up, dissipated, then disappears. Afterwards it’s very quiet, and he has no hope that anyone has heard him. Maybe he’ll try again in time, but he can’t shout and shout and shout, in the hope of a miracle. Who does he expect to hear?

He hugs his arms around the tree. It’s a weird, intimate embrace. He hates the tree, and he loves it. It is sheltering him and hurting him. It is utterly indifferent to him. He has to embrace it because he has no choice.

  


((O))

  


He must have fallen asleep again, and this time, perhaps, he was tired enough that even the pain didn’t wake him. His dreams are strange, full of fear and pain. He barely remembers them. There are just shreds in his mind as he comes back to consciousness, a feeling of fear, of running away. There’s a menace somewhere, a sense of something just behind his unprotected back, in that blind spot where he cannot see.

He stirs. His ribs sear in a boiling pain. His mouth is pressed against bark, wet. He has drooled against the tree. There’s bark or moss in his mouth, something that tastes of soil.

He blinks, and sees a little light. It’s an odd, grey-green light, a pre-dawn paleness filtered through leaves. His throat is dry and his bladder is bursting, and his arms and chest hurt so much. He’s so cold that he’s grateful for the sleep that took him away from it for a time.

He coughs, clears his throat, coughs again. He tries to generate some saliva, and after a while he manages to swallow. Then he pushes himself straighter against the trunk and tries to call out.

His voice stutters somewhere in his dry throat. He leans his cheek on the tree and thinks of good food, coffee, cream cheese. He swallows the saliva that comes, and tries again.

‘ _ Hilfe! Hilfe! _ ’

Again, there is no response. Just his voice in the trees. Nothing else.

He swallows again, and calls, ‘ _ Помогите! _ ’ then, ‘Help!’

Just silence. Only silence. The light is so thin it almost seems unreal. The forest is so quiet, but somewhere he can hear something now, a little susurration. Perhaps it is the temperature change that comes with dawn. Perhaps it is stirring up a wind.

He thinks about Napoleon. Is he even still alive? Where is he? How far away, how badly hurt? Something aches in his chest, something beyond the breaks and bruising. He needs to be there to help Napoleon, and he isn’t. He can’t be. He can’t move at all, and he’s going to die, roped to this tree. It’s the thought of leaving Napoleon to the mercy of their enemies that causes the pain.

‘ _ Hilfe! _ ’ he calls out again.

There’s something, but it’s very far away. Some faint noise, maybe an animal moving. It’s very far away. He remembers the howl he heard in the night.

A little chill runs through him. Wolves? Rare, but not impossible. He’s close to the Polish border. It’s possible. A fox might sniff at him, and run away if he shouted. Thank god there are no bears. But a wolf is a possibility.

He breathes. There’s nothing he can do. Wolves, bears, Thrushies with guns. He can’t do anything about any of them. If they came to tear him apart, there’s nothing he can do.

He shouts again, ‘ _ Hilfe! _ ’

He hears it again. Something. A noise like something moving. And then – 

A thrill prickles through him. What was that? A wolf? A person? A human being calling back at him? It was faint, and odd, but it was something.

‘ _ Hilfe! _ ’ he shouts. ‘ _ Bitte! Bitte... _ ’

He can still hear that noise. He is so tired, despite having slept. He doesn’t feel as though he’s slept at all. He leans against the tree and feels the pain in his ribs, the sharp pain of the branch, the numbness of his hands. His legs are so tired, aching with holding him up. He leans against the bark and listens to the soft noise of leaves rustling in the trees, and the noise somewhere, that specific, focussed noise, of something moving.

‘ _ Hilfe! _ ’ he calls. ‘Please...’

  


((O))

  


A moan. Is it a moan, some kind of cry? His eyes flash open. He sucks in breath. He feels dizzy with tiredness and hunger and thirst. His trousers are wet, and he makes a little noise of disgust. Warm and wet. That must be what woke him. He had been dreaming, hadn’t he? Somewhere, exposed, turning this way and that, desperate for the toilet. In the dream he had let go, and he must have done the same in life, because his trouser leg is warm and wet, cooling quickly.

It’s light. Some time must have passed, because now it’s light.

But there’s a moan. He hears it again. It’s directly behind him. He turns his head, tries to see.

‘ _ Wer ist es? _ ’ he asks. ‘ _ Wer? _ ’

Then – ‘Illya.’

He pants, catches his breath, tries again to see. ‘Napoleon?’

He can hear him breathing. He’s very close. He just can’t turn his head far enough.

‘Give – Give me a moment,’ Napoleon says.

He sounds low down, close to the ground, as if he’s crawling. His voice sounds odd, weak.

‘Napoleon?’ he asks. ‘Napoleon, are you all right?’

‘I’ve – been better,’ Napoleon replies. ‘Just – give – moment, honey. Okay?’

‘All right,’ he says. He wants more than anything to be able to turn and see. ‘All right.’

Every cell in his body is humming. He tries so hard to turn his head further than it will go, but he can’t. He just stands and waits. There’s quiet, and then Napoleon is moving again, coming closer. It sounds as if he’s dragging himself.

‘Napoleon?’ he asks.

‘I’m okay,’ Napoleon replies, but he’s panting. He’s so close. A hand touches Illya’s ankle, and he looks down and just manages to see. Napoleon’s hair, dark and disarrayed. Something that looks like blood.

‘You’re hurt,’ he says, unnecessarily.

‘Of course,’ Napoleon returns. ‘So are you.’

He pulls at the ropes on his hands, and of course nothing happens. He needs to be free. He needs to be able to see Napoleon, to touch him. He can smell blood and leaf mould.

‘All right,’ Napoleon says. His voice is weak. ‘All right. I’ll get you down from there.’

He uses Illya’s body to help himself up, putting a hand on his leg, clutching at the fabric of his trousers, clawing at the rough tree bark. He’s only using one arm, the other hanging limply at his side. Then he’s up, leaning against the tree, against Illya. He leans his head against Illya’s, kisses his lips. Illya kisses back, but he feels sick with empathy at the sight of his partner. Napoleon’s face is so bruised and cut he doesn’t look like himself. He’s covered in blood and dirt.

‘Hey,’ Illya says. He wishes so much his hands were free.

‘It’s all right,’ Napoleon murmurs against him. ‘All right. Hold still.’

He has a knife. It seems to take such a long time for him to saw at the ropes around Illya’s body. When they’re no longer holding him, he feels as if he could fall down; but his hands are still tied on the other side of the tree, and he can’t let himself drop.

‘All right,’ Napoleon says. ‘Hands. Hang on.’

He eases himself around the tree, his feet shushing through the dried leaves on the ground. Illya can’t even feel Napoleon touching his hands or the rope around his wrists, but suddenly his arms fall. Shoulders, elbows, all scream at the movement. He tumbles then, falling to the leaf-covered ground, shaking so badly he can’t stop it. Napoleon is down there too. Illya doesn’t know if he fell or just lay down, but he’s lying against Illya, close to him. Illya wants to put his arms around his partner but he can’t make his arms move at all. Maybe Napoleon is in the same situation. They just lie, so close, unable to hold each other, but touching all along the length of their bodies.

‘It’s all right,’ Illya murmurs against Napoleon’s cheek. ‘All right now. It’s all right.’

‘Yeah,’ Napoleon replies, but he sounds utterly spent. He breathes in and out, then says, ‘D’you know, you stink of piss?’

‘You’re lucky I don’t stink of worse,’ Illya says.

His trousers are wet, cool and uncomfortable. It’s a feeling that reminds him of being a child.

‘Sorry,’ Napoleon murmurs, and he kisses Illya again. His lips are cool.

‘You have a weapon?’ Illya asks him.

‘Just the knife.’

He wants to be able to move his hands. He can’t move his hands, his arms. The blood is surging back into the limbs, and he’s shaking so hard, and the shaking is causing agony in his hands and fingers. He wants to be able to hold and touch Napoleon, and he can’t. There’s such a smell of blood.

‘You’re badly hurt?’ he asks.

Napoleon gives a little huffing snort. He feels limp against Illya’s side.

‘Napoleon,’ he says.

He’s limp. Too limp. Illya tries to push himself up, hissing at the pain in his bruised and broken torso. It hurts, his arms are like rubber, he pushes them ineffectively at the ground and they give way beneath him. He tries to use his stomach muscles to sit, and his ribs sear, but he gets himself up.

‘ _ Napoleon _ ,’ he says.

Napoleon is lying on his side, his eyes almost closed. His skin looks so white against the leaves on the ground, against the dark of his hair and the blood and bruising on his face. Illya tries to touch him, but he can’t feel him. His fingers bend uselessly, and pins and needles explode with pain. He pushes at Napoleon and he slumps from his side onto his back.

Illya hisses his shock. Napoleon’s left trouser leg is a bloody mess. His left arm looks broken. His clothes are torn and dark with blood. He tries to touch Napoleon’s forehead, and he can’t feel it. He can just feel the awful tingling in his fingers and hands, tingling that takes over his entire body, screams in his mind. He couldn’t even try to feel Napoleon’s pulse.

He uses his rubber hands to nudge Napoleon’s head sideways, so he can see his neck. He can see his pulse there, at least, beating slowly.

He sits, panting. He leans forward awkwardly, and manages to rest his head on his knees. He sits, and breathes, letting the screaming feeling pulse through his hands until eventually it’s gone.

Finally, he can do something. Finally, he can feel his hands. He’s still shaking terribly, but he can feel. His hands ache and throb, but he can feel.

He lays his hand for a moment on Napoleon’s chest. Then he touches his forehead, his pulse, shakes him a little.

‘Napoleon,’ he says, but he’s obviously unconscious. He doesn’t hope for a response.

His torn shirt is still on the ground, and his tie is lying in the leaves like a black snake. They’ve been there all night, and they’re wet with dew. He finds the knife loosely clasped in Napoleon’s hand; a short, lethal looking combat knife that he must have taken from one of their captors. He uses it to slit the bloody leg of Napoleon’s trousers, and finds exactly what he expected. A bullet wound through the thigh. It must have missed major blood vessels, or Napoleon would be dead. There’s an entry wound and an exit wound. But it’s possible it’s touched the bone.

His hands are still shaking. It’s maddening. He does what he can. He uses the knife to shred his ripped shirt into something like bandages. Napoleon has a handkerchief in his pocket, and he uses that and some of the shirt as pads to lay over the bullet wounds. He uses more of the shirt to bandage the pads tightly against the leg.

He touches Napoleon’s arm gently. He doesn’t want to remove his jacket, to cause him even more pain, to risk moving the bones too much. But he feels Napoleon’s arm, closing his hands firmly about it, trying to hold it steadily, to not shake.

It’s broken. He can feel the bones grating under his hands. Napoleon’s fingers are faintly blue, his hand swollen. Illya finds a stick, and another, and uses them to splint the arm. The remainder of the shirt binds the splint. The tie is just long enough to use as a sling.

As he’s tying the final knot, Napoleon groans.

‘Hey, Illya says, touching his cheek with his palm. ‘Napoleon. Dear? Napoleon, can you wake up?’

Napoleon murmurs something, and Illya tries again.

‘Napoleon, you’re sleeping on duty.’

Napoleon’s eyes open, and for a moment they’re glazed, but then they clear, he turns his head, and vomits.

‘That’s no good,’ Illya tells him gently, using his hands to scoop away the leaf litter covered in sick. He gets it all away from Napoleon’s face, then turns back to him. ‘Don’t do that,’ he says. ‘Where do you think our next meal is coming from?’

Napoleon gives a ghastly smile.

‘Don’t think I could manage another bite,’ he says.

‘Napoleon, could you have been followed?’ Illya asks very seriously.

‘Maybe,’ he replies. ‘Maybe. Didn’t kill them all.’

‘All right,’ Illya nods. ‘Then we need to move.’

Napoleon makes an odd sound, something of a laugh.

‘I crawled,’ he says. ‘Four miles, Illya.’

Illya swallows. Four miles. Napoleon crawled four miles through the forest, just to come back for him.

‘I know,’ he says gently. ‘But you don’t have to crawl now.’

‘You gunna carry me?’

‘I don’t know,’ Illya says honestly. ‘We’ll manage something.’

Napoleon makes that odd laughing sound again.

‘We will,’ Illya promises him.

He touches his shaking fingers to Napoleon’s face, stroking his cheek. The blood and bruising is crimson, pink, purple, black in thick clots. Fists, he thinks. They punched him. He bends and gently kisses his partner’s lips. They’re still cold.

‘Is your leg broken?’ he asks.

‘Don’t know,’ Napoleon grunts. ‘Arm is.’

‘Yes, I know. I’ve splinted it.’

‘Ahh,’ Napoleon says, the word coming on an out-breath. ‘Feels better. Thanks.’

‘If I find you a stick, can you use it to walk?’

Napoleon’s eyes close, and he sighs. He seems immensely tired.

‘I can try,’ he says.

  


((O))

  


It’s such slow going. Illya took the knife and found a branch of the right shape, and made the best crutch that he could, but it’s slow going, with Napoleon hobbling through the leaf mould and tangled roots, half dragging his leg, his face white with pain. Illya wants to hold him, and he tries, but standing on his left hurts the broken arm, and standing on the right gets in the way of the crutch, and letting Napoleon put any weight on him makes his ribs burn. They keep walking, though. Perhaps in time they’ll get to the road. Perhaps they’ll see a car.

Napoleon is walking more and more slowly. There is sweat in beads across his forehead, running down his face, making the dried blood weep.

‘Need a rest?’ Illya asks him.

‘Yeah,’ he says.

Illya helps him down to the ground, to sit against the bole of a tree. He kneels by Napoleon’s side, touching his fingers to the soaked bandage about his leg. He’s still losing blood. He can’t afford to keep losing blood.

‘How many did you leave alive?’ Illya asks.

Napoleon gives a faint smile. ‘I don’t know. I killed – five, maybe six. Don’t know how many were there.’

Illya looks back at their path through the trees. It’s not immediately obvious, but a tracker would be able to see it straight away. The places where the dead leaves are disturbed and kicked about. Broken branches, crushed moss. Napoleon has made little troughs in the leaf mould where he’s dragged his injured leg. A dog would be able to scent the blood with ease.

‘Illya, if they’re coming, we won’t be fast enough to get away,’ Napoleon tells him seriously.

‘No,’ Illya says. ‘No, I know.’

He closes his fingers lightly around Napoleon’s hand. His fingers are cold.

‘You’re doing well,’ he says, and Napoleon huffs.

‘Like an Olympic sprinter,’ his partner says. ‘What about you?’

‘I’m okay,’ Illya says.

‘Of course you are,’ Napoleon says dryly. He looks about, then says, ‘Do you see any sign of water? A stream? Anything in a hollow? I could do with a drink.’

‘If I’d seen anything I would have told you,’ Illya says with an edge in his voice, but he immediately regrets the snappish tone. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says after a moment. ‘I’m – ’

‘Tired. In pain.’ Napoleon squeezes his hand. ‘We’re both in the same place, honey. It’s okay.’

‘I don’t know how you’re managing to walk,’ Illya says seriously, and Napoleon huffs a little noise. He must be in so much pain, so much more than Illya is, with his broken ribs.

‘I have to walk,’ he says.

‘They beat you up pretty well.’

‘Yeah. Didn’t tell them anything, though. That pissed them off. I goaded them, Illya. I could see the gun one of them had. He was on a hair trigger, and he was careless. So I goaded him, and I got the gun. Used every bullet getting out of there, so I tossed it, but I kept the knife.’

‘They shot you trying to get away?’

‘Yeah,’ Napoleon says shortly. ‘Ended worse for him than it did for me.’

Illya smiles grimly. ‘I’m sure it did.’

‘Yeah,’ Napoleon says.

He suddenly sounds very tired. Illya looks at him critically. His lips have grown pale and dry.

‘Napoleon, are you doing okay?’ he asks.

Napoleon’s eyes are very brown, and for a moment there’s such a deep connection that Illya feels as though he’s looking into his soul. He wants to be able to scoop him up with magic and float him to a hospital, to get hydration into him, to have a doctor set his limb with plaster, to have that bullet wound cleaned and sutured. He probably needs a transfusion. He needs painkillers and a soft, cradling bed.

‘I love you,’ Illya tells him, and Napoleon smiles, but then his eyes close.

  


((O))

  


Illya is trying not to give in to panic. That’s the trouble with loving someone. Their life becomes so precious. His heart seems to be beating with extra force, as if it’s trying to pass energy to Napoleon, but of course it can’t. All he can do is get Napoleon to civilisation, to medical help.

He stands there for a moment, just looking down at him. His heart is beating hard in his chest, and his ribs sear whenever he moves. Breathing feels like being stabbed. But Napoleon is unconscious, and so white.

It doesn’t take long to decide. Regardless of whether they’re being followed, he needs to get Napoleon out of here. He crouches down, leans forward, and kisses his forehead. Then he hoists up his limp form, getting his partner over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. He braces himself, and straightens. It feels as though someone were running a hot rod of metal through his chest, but he manages to get to his feet. Then, with Napoleon over his shoulder, he walks.

It hurts so much. His chest is on fire. The weight of Napoleon twists his chest, and it feels as though something inside him were screaming, screaming, screaming. It is like being on fire inside. He puts one foot in front of another, pushing through the rustling leaves, trying to stay on track. He’s not sure where he’s walking. He just knows where the sun is, has a vague idea of the time, and a vague idea of the direction of the road. He should hit it at some point. If he doesn’t get turned around, it should be impossible to miss.

He feels as if he can’t breathe, as if one side of his chest were frozen. It’s so hard to walk. He’s afraid of putting Napoleon down and not being able to pick him up again, so when he needs to rest he leans against a tree and braces his legs, and just stands and tries to get his breath. He can see the bruising on his own chest when he looks down, like a spill of red wine on a carpet. He can see the smears of red from Napoleon’s still-bleeding leg. He feels dizzy, and when he rests he has to hang his head and stand there, waiting for the blotches to clear from his eyes. There’s a mosquito whine in his ears that isn’t a mosquito at all. It’s just him, just his own body screaming that this is too much.

He walks on again. Napoleon feels like part of him, like a physical manifestation of love and guilt. He’s so afraid they aren’t going to make it, that he won’t be strong enough or fast enough to save Napoleon’s life.

He rests his head against the warm solidity of Napoleon’s hip, and keeps on walking. Somewhere he can hear noises, somewhere back in the woods. He can hear a dog barking, he’s sure. That sound sends a thrill of terror through him. He can’t run. There’s no way he can run. Even if he put Napoleon down, he wouldn’t be able to run.

He coughs, and it hurts so badly that his ears sing again. He awkwardly wipes his mouth with the back of his wrist, and he sees a bloody froth. He can taste the blood in his mouth, raw and metallic. He’s been tasting it for a while, and telling himself it was just hunger, just thirst, just pain. It’s not. It’s blood.

How far away is that dog? It might not even be to do with the men. It might just be a dog, any dog, a walker in the woods, a hunter, anyone. But if it’s to do with the men, there will be no escape. There’s nowhere to go.

He keeps walking. He feels dizzy. Napoleon is getting heavier and heavier, as if he’s sinking into Illya’s shoulder, melding with his body. His own legs feel like lead. He walks and walks, and – Are the trees getting thinner? Is there more light up ahead?

The road appears like a grey ribbon. It’s there, threading through the trees, making a pathway where light can come down and hit the ground. He doesn’t feel as though he can walk any more. He can hardly lift his feet. But he walks, and walks, and the noise in his head screams. He feels as though he’s going to be sick, he can hardly breathe, hardly get any air in at all. When his foot finally hits the tarmac, something in him breaks. There’s something in his vision, like staring at the sun, something white and red and black all at once. His foot is on the tarmac, and suddenly it’s coming up to hit his face, and his chest explodes, and there is nothing more.

  


((O))

  


The world is very white and light. It’s as if he’s floating. He’s floating somewhere above his own body, somewhere out of sync, as if he were looking at his reflection through a double pane of glass. There’s a great, warm cloud of numbness, like lying in a pool of blood-warm water, drifting. He can see whiteness, a ceiling, perhaps, a bright light. He’s drifting, swirling. Somewhere in his chest is a feeling like a white-hot knife, and he drifts about that centre, but everything else is warm, numb, far away.

  


((O))

  


Someone is humming. It’s a far away sound. Something like a bumblebee, far away. But there’s a tune, he thinks. It fades in and out, but there’s a tune. A person, humming. An annoyance.

_ Napoleon _ .

That thought is as definite as the air he is breathing. Napoleon is humming. Napoleon, in this room, humming.

He opens his eyes.

‘Hiya,’ Napoleon says.

He turns his head sideways. It still hurts to breathe. It still feels like there’s something hot stuck in his chest, like an iron bar. But he turns his head sideways and lets his eyes focus, and there Napoleon is, in a bed parallel to his own, smiling at him.

‘Hi,’ Illya replies, and his voice is shockingly weak. He concentrates just on breathing for a moment, then says, ‘We’re alive then.’

They’re obviously in a hospital. The air reeks of antiseptic. Napoleon’s bed is dressed in clean white linen. The table next to him is old, utilitarian, and has been cleaned so often it looks as if it’s been scoured by sand. A metal jug is sitting there, and a scratched glass containing water.

‘We’re both alive,’ Napoleon smiles.

Napoleon’s face is still bruised, but the blood has been cleaned away. The colour of the bruising tells Illya that he can’t have been unconscious for more than a day.

‘Your arm?’ he asks.

Napoleon taps the fingers of his right hand on the solid cast about his left arm. He makes a little tattoo with his fingernails, then he wiggles the fingers of his left hand.

‘Very efficiently set and plastered. You can say what you like about the Germans, but they’re efficient.’

‘Still in Germany?’ Illya asks.

He should have been able to tell, just by looking around. There’s something about this room, something deeply familiar. It reminds him of home. Soviet cleanliness, Soviet earnestness. People trying very hard with very little.

‘Still in Germany, still in the East,’ Napoleon nods. ‘But we’re okay.’

‘Your leg?’

Napoleon looks as if he’s thinking of moving the leg, then thinks better of it.

‘Sore as hell, but it’s getting better. The bullet missed the bone. They gave me a few pints of blood and sewed me up. Nothing to it.’

‘Ah,’ Illya says.

His chest aches and his breathing feels short and difficult. It’s a horrible feeling, like having a weight on his chest, like being close to death.

‘How did we get here?’ Illya asks.

It all feels like a blur. He remembers reaching the road, seeing that grey strip of tarmac. He remembers feeling the solidity under his foot. He remembers falling, everything swimming to black and red, fading away.

‘Seems a kindly army truck was passing,’ Napoleon tells him. ‘I have some kind of memory of lying in the back of a truck, and hearing you babbling in Russian. I don’t know, maybe that saved us, because they babbled in Russian back.’

‘Talking, Napoleon,’ Illya says with great patience. ‘Have you considered that we might have been talking?’

Napoleon snorts. ‘You can’t even remember how we got here. Maybe they were talking, but you were babbling. Do you know what happens, Illya, when you carry a hundred seventy-five pound man when you have broken ribs?’

‘A hundred and seventy-five?’ Illya asks archly, lifting an eyebrow.

Napoleon wrinkles his nose. ‘Well, I may have built a little more muscle since my last weigh in, my dear,’ he retorts. ‘Anyway, what happens is, you get a punctured lung. Did you know that?’

‘Oh,’ Illya says.

For a moment he feels sick. He thinks of his broken ribs grating, broken end against broken end, and feels sick. He looks down at himself, then moves his hand to a tube that’s coming out from bandages over his ribs. He hadn’t realised. No wonder his breathing feels so odd.

‘A punctured lung?’ he asks.

‘Uh-huh,’ Napoleon nods. ‘A punctured lung. You get a punctured lung, and then you collapse. Then some pleasant comrades pick you up and sling you in their truck and take you to the nearest hospital. There, at least one of us was conscious enough to explain who we are and why were were there, and so they treated us instead of throwing us to the secret police. Aren’t you glad I was conscious by then?’

Illya smiles. He is profoundly glad of that.

‘And they put us in a private room?’

Napoleon laughs. ‘I don’t know if that’s for our protection, or for protection of the good citizens in the regular wards. But Waverly knows where we are, and someone will arrange a pick up in a few days, when we’re passed to travel. They’ll send us back over the border in Berlin, and we’ll be home free.’

‘Home free,’ Illya murmurs.

Napoleon probably doesn’t know just how at home he feels here. It’s not Russia and he’s not exactly free, and he is realistic over the dangers of being trapped on this side of the iron curtain, but he does feel at home. Still, there is another level of home free. There’s being at home, truly at home, in their apartment in Manhattan, sitting together on the sofa in front of a lit fire, free to touch, to kiss, to do more. That is being free. It will take a while before either of them are well enough to do much, but they will be able to make the most of what they can do. Being taken to the edge of death gives one a wonderful appreciation for the physical reality of life.

‘I was afraid you were going to die,’ he says.

‘I know,’ Napoleon smiles gently. ‘But I didn’t, and neither did you.’

‘No,’ Illya replies.

His heart is thrumming inside him. His blood is moving. The pain tells him that he’s alive.

‘Let’s get better,’ he says. ‘Let’s go home.’


End file.
